Recently, Gujjubhai Banya Dabangg, a Gujarati play starring Siddharth Randeria and Tejal Vyas in lead roles, completed 10 years. Siddharth Randeria, also the director of the play, shares, “I am grateful to the audience for loving this play. We have done close to 600 shows and every time, the response has been amazing.
We adapted this from a Marathi one-act play by Sachin Mote. Long back, Sachin had narrated this story to me, and a lot of credit should go to our writer Pravin Solanki for the play’s success. At a time when the audience is dwindling for Gujarati plays, I feel proud that a lot of plays in the Gujjubhai series have completed more than 500 shows.
These days, plays find it tough to complete more than 200 shows. Some clips from Gujjubhai Banya Dabangg have more than 10 million views online and they are also quite popular for making Instagram reels.” Expressing his happiness as “Gujjubhai Banya Dabangg has become an iconic play”, Randeria shares, “Nobody can predict while rehearsing about how the audience will react to a play.
However, unlike films, the advantage you have here is that you can tweak things even after the premiere and there is always scope for improvement. The character of Gujjubhai is such that it allows me to improvise with each show, as I can interact with the audience and incorporate current topics, which adds an element of freshness. I am lucky to have the same set of co-actors for so long, as they understand the need for improvisations.